were resurrected. the one gift i would have happy to give you and the one i could never give you and the one i wanted to give you the most. of all the letters i have written to you as children this has the one that caused me the most doubt, but i know how much you like to get letters and it's the only gift i can give you now other than attention and love for your family. i hope you knew in your life how many people knew you and revered you and mime your own sister and if i haven't properly conveyed it it's been an honor. keep your wings clean bro. love caro. [applause] >> and now we get to hear from

milton's only brother, david marks. >> caro, that was beautiful. he would have loved it. my brother . milton is my only older brother and will always be. i carried him forever as i had tatooed on my shoulder "brothers forever" and i wanted to have him with me always. he was great, loving most of the time, and an older brother some of the time. little would you know sometimes i could be an annoying little brother. i like quotes, so i went and looked

for a few that reminded me very much of milton "let no one come to you without living better and happier. be the living expression of god's kiedness, kiedness in your eyes, kiedness in your face, kiedness in your smile. mother terreese a to the outside world we all grow old but to not brothers and sisters. we know each other as we always were. we know each other's heart. we share private family jokes. we remember family feuds, secrets and joys and grief. we live outside the touch of time. everybody can be great because everybody can serve. you don't have to have a college degree to serve. you don't have to make the subject and verb agree to serve. you don't need ton the second theory of thermodynamics and physics

to serve. you only need a heartful of grace, a soul generated by love" . martin martin luther king junior. as all of we watched our family work in the community and we were to work with other people. it was a little crazy growing up in a political family. we had seven different phone lines and my mom wouldn't get the one with the seven buttons and we had seven phones and all of us on the phone all the time. no hold button. our house was always full of people. i see many of you here that became family. you were there all the time, working on elections, and after my dad ran

you helped my brother run. the same people helping us, being part of the family, working together for the city. i remember some of the crazy things we did growing up in political life. going to i think it's call -- i don't know if it's called the muni lot or parking lot and where the buss are in the morning so we could put a handout on every seat and bus that was there. i remember standing out in front of markets and it was raining and horrible and saying "will you vote for my dad" and milton loved this. he loved this energy and out of most of us and showed in what he ended up doing. all three kids learned at an early age giving to other people was one of the main things we were put on this world to do. our mom and dad taught us that. milton was a true

believer sometimes to his detriment and would take on any power he needed to be even if it meant being fired from the board and "you're not doing enough. you're not raising enough money". he would take on anyone anytime if it was the right thing to do. he felt so strongly things needed to be resolved at city college and he never stop fighting after being diagnosed and surgery and he went to the meetings. he was a true believer and wanted to make it a better educational facility. many of his friends who are here and they would agree if you wanted someone in your corner you wanted milton. and there was a question that

he had a temper and he did not and we had a bully in our neighborhood that was beating me up and milton made it clear physically that is not going to happen again. i am proud to say my son carries milton as his middle name and there is no one else that could carry that name. sam has many of the characteristics like my better and people to help people and he truly cares. that is the one thing that will always set my brother aside. he truly cared. he did not make it up. it wasn't for politics. it wasn't to make friends. he cared. milton will be remembered for many things. for me he will always be my brother, and amazing father to three

wonderful boys and faithful and loving husband to his wife abbey. i love you milton. [applause] >> and it's now time to hear from a colleague and friend in public service, state senator mark leno. [applause] >> thank you peter and thank you abbey so much for this invitation to be part of this celebration of milton's life. oftentimes or sometimes remarkable people come from unremarkable families. sometimes remarkable people come from remarkable families. that certainly was milton's situation . i did not know

senator marks all that well, but i am very well aware of his judicial and legislative accomplishments. everyone loved senator marks even when he was a republican. and then of course carolene and her own force of nature feared by many, loved by more. i certainly was in that latter category, but i think we all recognize that milton learned well from his folks, and he learned well from his jewish tradition. he learned that the repair of the world was something that was all of our responsibilities. he learned a lesson also from the tal mud that says" not ours to

complete the task nor it is to begin it" and whether the issue was restoring, revitalizing, increasing the urban canopy, or historic preservation, or affordable housing, or social service milton would begin it and begin it and begin it again. we first got to know each other before we ran for his first term as a trustee for community college when he had taken on the job of the executive director of friends of the urban forest and i am up in windy valley and lost a tree that had been with me for nearly 20 years and i needed it replaced and we called them and they were having a neighborhood planting, and he assisted me in getting the right tree and stand the wind and the traffic and all of the other considerations

and he came up to make sure that the tree survived and thrived and if you haven't done it minimum 20-gallons of water for the first three years. that tree was about this big around, and not much taller than myself, but i followed milton's instructions and today almost 14 years later it is about 30 feet tall at about a foot in diameter and there is not a time that i water that true that i don't of course remember milton marks. about a year or so later on the board of supervisors i found myself chair of the finance committee with my trustee and able co-chair, vice chair,

supervisor peskin and milton was in my office now that we have this trusted friendship. he learned well from his father and mother and the money raised for the urban forest needed to stay in the budget, and it was going to be a heavy lift, but he certainly delivered the message well, but i couldn't guarantee him anything. of course milton was going to put all of his eggs and money in one basket so he went to ever supervisor's office and often with ten, 20, 30 neighborhood constituents of that supervisor to make the ponent yet again, and when the issue came before the finance committee and subsequently before the board i had to write milton a thank you note because he made my job so easy. it wasn't controversial. he did all the work himself and that

quarter of a million dollars stayed in the budget that yeemplt i think if milton was asked about the accomplishments he would be most proud it would immediately be the love of his family. he was a very engaged, loving, playful, creative, present father, and so adored nathan, theo, will and of course his remarkable and miracle of a wife abbey, and the love and relationship he had with david, caro. that's what made his life a success and he knew that so very well. if i have learned one thing in my years of the legislature it's that term limits are real. they're real because they come and you go, but i got the sense

from milton that he understood that we have term limits for life as well, but how easy is it for all of us to life life so easily without thought or recognition that is time limited. if you look at the life of milton marks you know with certainty he understood there wasn't a day or moment to waste because the click is ticking on his tragically too short life. i would like to close with a hebrew prayer which is said at times of joyful occasions, but i think might necessarily have greater meaning at times of painful transition because of course life isn't

life without the joy, without the sorrow ." (speaking hebrew). >> blessed as you and krawt creator and sustained us and brought us to this time and place. thank you. [applause] >> please welcome henny kelly, milton -- among many other things and milton's first grade teacher -- no, no. do i have that wrong? okay. thanks. >> i need to tell you that there was a mistake in his biography.

among the schools that milton went to he also went to presidio where he was my student. his mother knew that if you were in politics in this city you should go to public school, so you could say "public school. of course i went to public school" and milton was a very interesting student, so i was thinking about what we learned in class, and one of the things is shakespeare, and when learned a lot of other things too, but shakespeare spoke of seven stages of man, and i don't have enough time here today to go that deeply into that, so i will focus on three stages of the life of milton marks as i knew him. milton was my student. milton was my colleague and

milton was definitely my friend. at presidio junior high school at the era before they became middle schools he was a student in my english class. even then the complexity of his personality could be seen within the child there was reflective and mature little man. adolescence can be sortd and graded in the classrooms by their sense of humor. the immature ones are still laughing at the jokes from thid grade. why did tiger look in the toilet? he was trying to find poo. >> >> i have 12th graders that still laugh at that assumer but even as a 12 year old milton

had developed a taste for rye and mature humor and sophisticated humor and he was one of the few when we read the "romeo and juliet" and really got it was that was so wonderful in the humor there, and there was a lot of humor, and it was all very dirty, and that was the one thing that got my students to really love romer and juliet" and the parents thought it was good and my students understand there were magnificent dirty jokes and words that they understood and their parents didn't. milton was one of the first that got

it and help the other students to see you really need a good vocabulary and if you study the words that shakespeare uses, you can learn a lot of things that your parents probably wouldn't appreciate, but that you would, and so milton was fun. he understood puns. he understood every time i told a joke that went over everybody's head. he was one of the three people in the class that had the look in his eyes that said "i at least get it mrs. kelar". i get t we kept in touch over the years after he left presidio and when milton was ready to serve with the community we talked about what he could do. milton came

to my house and talked to my husband and i dennis and he talked about the school board, not the college board where he was distinguished and twice e elected, but the hard politics of k-12 sfud board of education. what can you tell a friend that is wanting to jump into the fire pit? nothing that he would listen to. instead i took him to a board of education evening. we sat in the back of the auditorium and watched the tangled interweaving of interest that played out on that stage. milton decided to seek his service elsewhere and when i received a note for thanking him for supporting him in the election for the college board

i saw gratitude of a friend that saw entanglements not suited to his talents. eventually we served together on the democratic central valley committee and i saw the school boy personality i saw years earlier and saw the joyful boy who inhabited the conscientious and compassionate man. he did this thought his life. he was such a serious boy but yet a playful man. i always tell that in my class he was beyond middle age in ninth grade. he was older than his father. he was more serious than his mother, and in that class he also was the most joyful, the most

miswhich iious of all my students and when we were writing a mystery he had to write it from the point of the perpetrator, and that he had to plan the perfect crime. my little milty went to the palace of legion of honor and explained to them he was doing research how you protect this great art, and then he wrote his story from the point of view of stealing my favorite painting, so that he could bring it to me, and when i brought it to the palace of legion of honor they said

"pretty damn good" and he fooled them and you know he used his family as a background why he was doing this, and it was very important, and he wrote a hum dinger of a perfect crime. most other people were writing about stealing something out of kitchen, and they were also writing about how to cheat on a test, but milton was stealing me my favorite painting. what a kid. i mentioned shakespeare when i started this little reflection on the life of my milton marks, our milton marks. since i was citizen teacher let me take you back to the classroom and shakespeare and the words said about the noblest roman of them all, brutus. his life was gentle and the elements subtle mixed in him that nature

might stand up and say to all the world this was a man, gentle, compassionate, conscientious and funny and serious. this was a man. this was our milton marks. [applause] >> thank you henny. now, to milton's friend from a slightly later period in his life craig hofer. >> milton -- milton and i first

became friends and 1992 in the frozen of maine where milton was two years ahead of my. i will grateful to tim dirkin who spoke moving at his funeral in august but can't be here today. i will be grateful for introducing us and setting up a wonderful friendship for so long. strangely while most college chums tend to grow distant after they graduate milton and i became closer over the years as they passed, particularly after we both arrived at university of pennsylvania for graduate school back in 1988. the reason for this is simple but power. it reminds me of woody allen's line "90% of life is just showing up". milton had a gift for staying there. he stayed involves in everyone's life no

matter they were. before facebook there was a milton. you talked about his family and how important it was to him and i thought the connectedness was related to that family and family business in politics from such an early age and campaigning and engaging in people of every background, at home or some junket in some part of the world. all of these were second nature to milton marks. i loved david talking about the seven phone lines at the house and brings back the memories of visiting there. there was always something going on at the marks house on jordan avenue. his parents rented out rooms to

jewish refugees and this was before cell phone and the phone rang around the clock and various languages. it wasn't uncommon to run into a complete stranger in the kitchen at night. i remember visiting one time at spring break and we had to sleep in cots in the limning room and all of the beds were taken by others. but interacting with all these people in all these different ways i think gave milton the confidence and the sense of himself to be his very own self, and at a time when politicians tailor their accents and adjust their verb contractions and their audience and who they're talking to milton talked with all people from all walks of life around the world the same

way. he talked to my toddler daughters the same way as my grand mother and people that didn't speak english as first language and everyone the same way. everyone connected with milton. and because milton had experienced so many of these situations on the road, on the campaign trail, and in the family kitchen, he understood protocol and the way things should work when people like me should have known better. unfortunately my wife susan can't be with us today but she still laugh bs milton on our wedding day and in maryland. after the organ blast signals the service is over our ushers and ron who is here today and 4r-d them outside and on to the church steps and about a minute

of back slaps and high fives is dawned on us only the wedding party left the church. all the gusts were still include and included ron's wife jenn and stephanie and mark cline who are here today and everyone was inside the church waiting for something and characteristically it was milton and figured it out and slapped his hand across his head like a v8 mothers and said "the mothers" and they went and escorted the mothers out and the rest of the gusts looked relieved and i remember why he was called the in house episcopalian and raby it might be interesting to know that

well behaved ones wait for the esures and escort the mothers of the bride and carole groom first. now with connection to people. >> >> milton was curious about everything. when susan and i moved to cleveland after graduate school many of our friends wrote us off and milton thought of it as a chance to explore a part of the world he hadn't seen and visited often and he went to see the rock and rel hall of fame and he had his spells of self doubt from time to time, but